Glass tiles for walls and floors have become increasingly popular to allow light transmission therethrough and there have been developments to light these tiles to show off their colors. Various types of lighting have included glass bulbs. However, bulbs do not have a long life and removing such bulbs would be expensive and time consuming.
Another way to provide lighting for these tiles is to use fiber optics that are powered by a halogen light sources. However, fiber optic lighting systems are expensive to install and require a lot of energy to light the tiles.
Light emitting diodes (LED's) have been considered in the past as a light source for lighting glass tiles. But it has always required a modification of the basic tile design to receive the LED's. LEDS have been installed underneath the tiles, so once the tiles are in place and are grouted the LED tile assembly becomes permanent. Since the LED's have a life of a several years, the tiles would then have to be removed and the LED's replaced. Replacement and reinstallation is a very time consuming and costly process that does not make using this type of installation of LED's a very viable option in lighting the glass tiles especially since glass tiles are also expensive.
Various types of illumination devices have been proposed over the years for lighting walls and floors and other areas. See for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,587,855 to Johnson; 4,340,929 to Konikoff et al.; 5,107,408 to Vernondier; 5,321,593 to Moates; 5,559,681 to Duarte; 6,732,478 to Russell et al.; 6,739,735 to Talamo et al.; 6,857,230 to Owen; 6,929,382 to Kuisma; 7,125,137 to Kitajima et al.; and U.S. Published Patent Applications 2005/0116667 to Mueller; 2005/0257436 to Vanderpol; 2006/0197474 to Osen; and 2007/0133193 to Kim. However, none of these devices and systems overcome all the problems with the prior art described above.
Thus, the need exists for solutions to the above problems with the prior art.